Dell Mini 9 Inspiron 910 Laptop Notebook (Black) - Intel® Atom N270 1.6GHz, 1GB DDR2, 8GB HD, 8.9″ WSVGA, Integrated Webcam, Windows XP Home Review
I’ve been looking for something like this for years to chronicle my motorcycle trips.
I was loathe to give up saddlebag space to a full-size laptop and worried that the heat, dust and vibration of motorcycle travel would kill a laptop with a conventional hard disk drive.
So I started out with travel journals, but I had to wait until I got home to blog my trip stories.
Then, five years ago, I tried blogging from the road with a Palm Treo 300. It was barely adequate. I stepped up to a Treo 600, and then the 700p, but even with the accessory fold-out keyboards, it was still a chore to write blog entries and manage my e-mail. And while the cameras have improved, they’re still pretty bad.
I miss the 3G connectivity with the Mini 9, but Wifi hotspots are becoming more plentiful and it’s getting easier to find them, especially if you have the AT&T deal with Starbucks or McDonald’s.
The SSD (solid state drive) seems perfect for motorcycle travel, since it has no moving parts and is, therefore, less vulnerable to damage from vibration.
The 1GB of RAM and 8GB of SSD capacity are plenty, assuming you don’t junk the Mini 9 up with lots of software. And there isn’t any reason to do that, considering that you can do all of your email, word processing, spreadsheets, calendars, and other office-type functions up in “the cloud” with Google Apps.
I found the Internet Explorer browser’s menu bars took up too much screen real estate, so I installed Google’s streamlined Chrome browser that lets me see more of the web pages at a glance. I also avoid loading up the SSD by using an 8GB SanDisk thumb drive as a D: drive.
I’m not much for touchpads - the Mini 9’s touchpad works fine, I’m just not a touchpad guy - so I use a wireless optical mouse.
The built-in webcam is surprisingly good. I have yet to use it for a live conversation, but it shoots quite acceptable still photos. The SD card reader is perfect for importing images from a higher-quality digital camera.
The smaller keyboard takes a little getting used to. The apostrophe and quote marks and dash/underscore are not where my fingers expected to find them, but it doesn’t take long to make the synaptic adjustment.
The Mini 9 is intelligently designed when it comes to upgrades. You can access its guts by removing two screws and a cover plate on the underside. As I said, it comes with 1GB of RAM. You can double that for about and the conversion takes about 5 minutes.
Computer development being what it is, there are sure to be subsequent generations of netbooks with more speed, power and versatility. But for now, I think the Dell Inspiron Mini 9 is one of the best buys out there.
